Thursday, June 11, 2009

A dud

So far I'm 0 for 1 with the library books.

I picked up an autobiography of Paul Tillich's wife, Hannah. I figured it would give me more insight about him since I don't know very much. I thought it would describe what it's like to be the wife of a theologian. Something about his research and writing, maybe a description of their family life.

The blurb describes the book this way:

"From Time to Time, Hannah Tillich's autobiography of her life with Paulus Tillich, has caused a furor in literary-and theological-circles months before its publication, principally among those who cannot or do not want to see Paulus as the passionate man he was."

My mom tried reading it first, described it as bizarre, and gave it back to me. This still didn't faze me as we often have different taste.

I had assumed "passionate" meant emotionally and spiritually, but I didn't expect to find myself reading about Tillich's sexuality. At first I thought it was a few isolated experiences, but I soon realized that the whole book was comprised of Hannah and Paul Tillich's romantic encounters with various people (including, of course, each other). Of course there were other themes, but the emotions were so intense that I found it difficult to read and make any kind of conclusion.

It was so different from what I expected that I'm not even sure I can evaluate the writing, although other reviews seem to praise it.

Search This Blog

About Me

Update on our family:

Our son David was born July '12 and Sophia was born August '16. We spend the school year in St. Pete and do some traveling in the summer.

If you want to read more about a missionary's life in St. Petersburg, you can browse past posts. Key posts are linked below (under construction since the Link List gadget is borken) and there are also labels and archives further down the sidebar.